


Promises Kept

by singleword



Category: Phantom of the Opera (2004)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-04-26
Updated: 2005-04-26
Packaged: 2020-01-23 09:57:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18547447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singleword/pseuds/singleword
Summary: The gardens were rich in colours of a thousand flowers, but the roses were kept apart and left untended, and no rose was ever allowed in the house. Servants whispered about their strange mistress, and the sheer absence of roses reminded Christine of a broken promise that must be mended.





	Promises Kept

She waited until her child was grown. That is, Meg was ten, not seven, and spent more time scampering about her father and learning to ride bareback than she'd once done talking and singing with her mother.

Christine didn't sing to her daughter anymore. She read, or told imagined stories, or recited poems. But no more songs. Once, when Meg was little, Christine had lullabied her with an old tune and whispers of Angels. Meg's bright voice framing the same words had Raoul pale and shivering (one hand at his throat). Christine made Meg swear to never sing those words again.

And Christine had made a decision. Or rather, she remembered one. She had once come back from the point of no return, but in truth all those years had been lived on borrowed time. Dreams of candles and caves. She'd catch herself humming, and would flinch at the sound. Light reflected from the surface of water distracted her - dangerous when riding alone. The gardens were rich in colours of a thousand flowers, but the roses were kept apart and left untended, and no rose was ever allowed in the house. Servants whispered about their strange mistress, and the sheer absence of roses reminded Christine of a broken promise that must be mended.

The note was left by Meg's pillow, and was sealed in red wax. It was very simple.

_You are your father's angel. Your mother must find her own._  


*

 

If this had been a tale such as those she told her daughter, she'd have walked from where the sun rose to where it set, singing all the while. Or she'd have worn out three pairs of iron shoes. As it was, she cut her hair and changed her clothes for a stableboy's. The old ostler's pony went missing, as did his cloak.

The only remarkable thing about the young man on the road, if you were to remark him at all, was the look in his eyes. It was the look of a man who had given up everything he loved.  


*

 

She asked no questions, as she travelled. She didn't need to. She only listened, through the windows of hotels and rich houses, for the music she remembered. And from place to place she heard it, a trace of power or of sadness, snatched at and missed by an amateur composer. He had passed through here, then.

She was tracking by sound, listening for traces obscured by time as snow covers footprints. No wonder it took her so long.  


*

 

It was snowing in the town when she arrived. Outside one home, an old man stood muffled in several coats while talking to a policeman. She slipped from the pony's back and made a show of checking a hoof for stones, listening still.

"Missing, not a sign of it."

"Nothing else was disturbed?"

"Nothing."

"And this is the only one you have?"

"I make them, monsieur, as you know, but I don't usually keep them here. This one took me ages, a special order for a good man. Only now it's gone."

The policeman scratched his head. "Who around here would steal a violin, and from you, no less?"

"That's just it monsieur, I don't know that it's _theft_. It was paid for, the money's in the drawer. But it's not gone to the man for whom it's meant."  


*

 

After that, however, she lost the trail. Days behind him, she'd been, maybe so close as hours. But after the taking of the violin, the wind carried no whisper.  


*

 

If this had been a tale such as those she told her daughter, she'd have been a steadfast heroine that never gave up. And she didn't quite admit defeat, not yet, but she decided to stop her searching. There had to be a better way to find him, one less dangerous and cold. She turned the pony (tired, he was, but patient) toward roads she knew. She wasn't far, now, from the cemetery outside Paris. And it had been so long since she'd been here.

When she thought back on it, the graveyard would have been the perfect place to begin such a search. As it turned out, it was where the search ended.  
  


*

 

The violin sings quietly, hesitant and halting. But then, it is cold, and gloved fingers can not be so precise on the strings. Her father had never worn gloves, laughing and saying his calluses were enough.

This man, swathed in black and hunched on the stone steps, is not her father. Her father had never looked so tired or lost. Even dying he had kept a smile for her.

Christine stops, lowering the hood of her cloak.

Strings tremble and fall silent.

Once she might have known what to say, young and sure and pure of voice. Now she can't trust herself to speak. She only crosses the distance between them, pushing short hair away from her face as she kneels on the step below him.

" _Brava. Brava._ " The barest thread of a sound.

He turns to face her and she drinks in the sight – pulled and twisted skin and deep lines near his mouth, the lips themselves curving faintly upwards.

"My father never taught me to play the violin."

No answer but a gloved hand carefully taking hold of hers.

"Will you?"

He stands, letting the instrument slip from his lap into the snow. She flinches on its behalf before he pulls her up.

Fingers comb through the remains of her hair.

"You weren't meant to play the pageboy."

An old role in a forgotten opera. So many years since then, years where she's danced through the roles others chose for her – beloved wife and mother. She lets her hands run from his wrists up his arms to his shoulders to the nape of his neck, fingertips tangling through greying hair.

"There isn't a script anymore."

His eyes, against the grey world, are blue. And they close as she pulls his mouth down to hers.


End file.
